Love’s Messengers

In 2010, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons made a short film showing the effects of selective attention. Six people appear in the film — three in white shirts, and three in black shirts. The people in white throw a basketball to each other, and the black-shirted team does likewise as all players move constantly around the small, office-sized area.

Chabris and Simons recruited a group of people to watch the video and count the number of passes made by the team in white while ignoring the team in black. What the viewers didn’t know was that a person wearing a gorilla suit would appear halfway through the game, thump their chest, then cross the court and disappear out of view.

The video shows the gorilla in plain sight for nine seconds, yet half of the viewers who counted the passes never registered it. How could something so obvious go completely unnoticed? Not only were these viewers surprised to learn that a gorilla had passed across the court, they couldn’t understand how they missed it.

The Peculiarities of Perception

If you’re familiar with A Course in Miracles, you can probably guess where I’m heading with the ‘Invisible Gorilla’ story. How many times does the Course remind us that perception reflects a wish? We see what we want to see — we send out messengers to bring back a message we have constructed in advance — and we will ignore everything that might contradict that message, even if it comes via a large, chest-beating gorilla:

‘Perception selects, and makes the world you see. It literally picks it out as the mind directs. The laws of size and shape and brightness would hold, perhaps, if other things were equal. They are not equal. For what you look for you are far more likely to discover than what you would prefer to overlook’ (T-21.V.1:1-5).

What exactly do we want to look upon? What is the message we want to receive? If we have identified with the ego, the message will be one that affirms our status as a separate, unworthy being — that we are ‘the home of evil, darkness and sin’:

‘Perception is a choice and not a fact. But on this choice depends far more than you may realise as yet. For on the voice you choose to hear, and on the sights you choose to see, depends entirely your whole belief in what you are’ (T-21.V.1:7-9).

… Listen to what the ego says, and see what it directs you see, and it is sure that you will see yourself as tiny, vulnerable and afraid. You will experience depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of impermanence and unreality’ (T-21.V.2:3-4).

Even if people stroke our ego and we feel good for a while (what the Course calls ‘special love’) our responsiveness to that external input highlights our neediness and dependency, so we’ll still experience ‘all of the above’ associated with ego identification. It’s just that the fallout is delayed, and so the challenge then becomes tying the effect to the cause. That we basked for a while in the approval of others (or worldly success) won’t appear to be the depression-making thing it can be. But the proof of our goal — to feel unworthy — is in the inevitable effect.

Holy Days

Ask any psychotherapist what the weeks leading up to Christmas are like, and they will tell you it is their busy season. Reunions with family and friends for obligatory get-togethers can be tough for many. Old issues surface and sensitivities are heightened: everyone is prepared to see what they ‘always see’, to hear what they ‘always hear’. Borrowing from the Course, we can say that ‘Imagined slights, remembered pain, past disappointments, perceived injustices and deprivations’ all pay a visit during reunions, guiding our perceptions, priming us to see the past in the present.

We could all provide a detailed list of the many ways we have been hurt in the past. We may have, for example, ample evidence to suggest that someone important to us — a parent, sibling, partner, child — doesn’t care much about us; doesn’t love us. Our evidence room is well stocked. Yet, perception represents a choice. If we don’t like the way we feel, nor want to withhold healing from ourselves and others, we can choose to see things differently.

Once we understand that rejection, abandonment, and unfair treatment at someone else’s hands stems from their own unmet needs in the past, we are able to not take it personally. This is a great beginning toward forgiveness because it lessens our defensive anger, and depression.

But we can do more than reinterpret what we have already perceived. We can also broaden our perspective. We can consider that others might have appreciated us more than we imagined. (Was there a different evidence room?) The more we connect with the wholeness and grandeur of our spiritual Self, the more this seems like a possibility because we realise we are indeed lovable. As the Course says:

‘You are the work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and wholly loving. This is how a man must think of himself in his heart, because this is what he is’ (T-1.II.2:3-4).

And if we are that Self, and others are part of It, then how can there not be mutual appreciation on some level? In ‘The Answer to Prayer’ section of the Course, Jesus emphasises that the way we know we have something is to see it in someone else. If we want to know we are a loving Self, then we must decide that others are also home to such a Self:

‘The message your brother gives you is up to you. What does he say to you? What would you have him say? Your decision about him determines the message you receive. Remember that the Holy Spirit is within him, and His Voice speaks to you through him’ (T-9.II.5:1-5. Bold type mine).

If we choose to remember the truth in others, we will remember the truth (‘wholly lovable and wholly loving‘) about ourselves. Choosing this requires a willingness to let what used to appear as mountains, take on their proper proportion as molehills:

I love you for the truth in you, as God does… I hear only the Holy Spirit in you, Who speaks to me through you. If you would hear me, hear my brothers in whom God’s Voice speaks. The answer to all prayers lies in them. You will be answered as you hear the answer in everyone. Do not listen to anything else or you will not hear truly…‘ (T-9.II.7:1,4-8. Bold type mine).

This Christmas, as we encounter trials associated with various reunions, we could ask ourselves the following questions: How would we approach someone if we knew that they loved us? How would we respond to their impatience, thoughtlessness, anger, or unkindness, if we knew this to be so? What would change? Would we finally notice some different evidence, Love’s messenger, a ‘gorilla’ in our midst?

Books by Stephanie Panayi

Above the Battleground: The Courageous Path to Emotional Autonomy and Inner Peace

The Bridge of Return: A Course in Miracles as a Western Yoga

Jung and A Course in Miracles

The Farthest Reaches of Inner Space

Alchemists of Suburbia

Reflections on ‘A Course in Miracles’: Volume One

Reflections on ‘A Course in Miracles’: Volume Two

Reflections on ‘A Course in Miracles’: Volume Three

Reflections on ‘A Course in Miracles’: Volumes One to Three